


Finding Home

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Paint The Sky With Stars [52]
Category: Night World - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Crossover, Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 11:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8011522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "crossover of any two fandoms, any, <i>My little flock of boxes and I surrounded by a painted-white unknown. / Soon as this wall in my heart comes down, I'm gonna make it feel like home.</i> (Vienna Teng - 1BR/1BA)"</p><p>Over the years, John Sheppard and Evan Lorne have to keep finding new homes. </p><p>Set pre-SGA for John and pre-SG1 S7 for Evan and up through the current storyline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Home

John stood in his dorm room at Stanford, stared at the plain white cinderblock walls, the two narrow beds, and his life in a little flock of boxes on the floor. This was his home now. This was his life. He’d never appreciated how _not human_ his childhood homes were. He’d always figured that he and Dave blended in better with humans than a lot of their relatives, that their home, constantly open to humans, was basically a human home. He’d never appreciated the touches of Hearth and Crook in his home, though, bundles of sage and other herbs placed on walls and in corners and along picture frames, little symbols of the ancient gods and goddesses from whom they were descended, drew power. How there was never pure iron or silver in the house, how everything was marble and brick and stone. How there was very little wood, very little that was flammable.  
  
But that wasn’t his life anymore. He wasn’t John Sheppard, rising Son of the Redferns, with blood and night singing in his veins. He wasn’t John Sheppard, second son of The Sheppards, destined to be David Sheppard’s enforcer once David ascended to the Night World Council and began wielding the magics of midnight. He was John Sheppard, college freshman. He was going to major in math, and then he was going to join the Air Force and become a pilot and fly. He was going to make this place his home.  
  
So he dug around in one of the boxes, found his Johnny Cash poster, and tacked it to the wall above his bed. There. Now this room was his. 

*

Evan had grown up sharing rooms with his sister and various cousins or whoever was passing through the commune, sleeping on floors or couches or, when he was little, in panther-form and curled up in a chair or along the back of a couch, atop a bookcase. He’d grown up sharing clothes with the other kids on the commune and in his leap, because combat leathers were hard to come by, and they all grew in fits and spurts. He’d grown up sleeping in the shade of a joshua tree on desert sands, under the moon on the beach, in a box in an alley, in a tree, tracking prey as one of the Forsaken.  
  
He’d never had a room of his own, so when he stood in the doorway of his dorm room at Berkeley, with all his worldly possessions in his duffel bag, he felt - alone. Stranded. No leapmates or cousins to sleep with at night. The room was square and neat, with cinderblock walls, a wooden desk, a closet, a rack at the foot of his bed to hang his towel on. Evan would have to stay in human form constantly. He had to pretend to be human, too.  
  
He was Forsaken no more.  
  
He was just Evan Lorne.  
  
He set his duffel bag on his bed and stared at the white walls, needed to do something to make them come alive. He dug around in his bag and came up with one of his black lily t-shirts. He used a pair of scissors to cut it down to a rectangle, and then he hung it on the wall, like a flag.  
  
Maybe by the end of the school year, he would know how to call this place home.

*

The barracks for basic training were stark and crowded at the same time. John and the rest of his classmates would be here for six weeks before shipping out for officer training school, and all John had to do was not be too much of a pansy. He was sturdier than most humans by virtue of being a witch, but he wasn’t necessarily stronger or faster, so he’d have to do his best to keep up.  
  
He’d never appreciated quite how wealthy his family was till college. He knew the Sheppards had money, the Redferns had money, but college was the first time he’d to share his bedroom and bathroom and a dozen other little things that his roommate freshman year hadn’t even blinked over sharing. John had relished not having to go to company parties or the opera or the ballet or a dozen other boring, stuffy, white-collar events designed to maintain the carefully manufactured facade of being human, being corporate moguls. The power the Sheppards wielded didn’t come from money, but the money certainly helped smooth the way for the things the Council wanted done.  
  
So to be spending this open space with two dozen other men for the next six weeks was - unimaginable. John was perfectly human at this point, had stopped celebrating the witches’ sabbaths, stopped marking important Night World anniversaries, learned to say _Oh my god_ instead of _Sweet Isis_ when something surprised him. But here, with only his bunk and his foot locker to call his own, he felt humanity pressing down on him, all around him, and he was forcibly reminded that he was _not human_.  
  
It wasn’t until their first day of libo, two weeks in, that he felt like maybe this was okay, because he glimpsed, on the far side of the training field, a black lily on a t-shirt. He never did find out who that soldier was, but he knew he wasn’t the only Night Child taking a new step, and maybe he could learn to call the barracks home.

*

Evan hadn’t planned on joining the Air Force. He’d majored in geophysics, could get a good job as a surveyor or an engineer in a mining outfit for an oil outfit, but college was expensive, so he signed up for ROTC his freshman year, and he had time to practice, to acclimate to what people expected of him physically as a human - how far and how fast and how long he could run, how much he could bench press, how soon he could hear or see or sense. And if he joined the Air Force, which was considered the lightest and fluffiest and least combat-oriented for the four branches of service, he could be posted anywhere in the world. The Night World was spread far and wide, but it was concentrated in the New World, where there was space and strange people and better opportunities to blend in. The Night World cared little for human politics that didn’t affect them directly, and Evan knew the Elders on the Council viewed human wars as petty squabbles. The Night World had its own soldiers and enforcers. Evan had once been one of them.  
  
He was one of them no longer. He could be a surveyor for the Air Force, the recruiter told him. Ship out to some posting, do some surveying, help the locals dig a well or establish a mine, build goodwill between America and her allies, and never see a bullet in his life.  
  
And then came basic training. Sure, Evan had gone running, doing paintball wargames with the rest of the guys in ROTC. Basic training was the big leagues. Here they’d learn to be real soldiers, be given real weapons, learn how to kill.  
  
Evan already knew how to kill.  
  
When he stepped into the barracks with his entire life contained in his duffel bag, something like relief unfurled in him. Wide open space. Lots of other people. For the first time in a long time, he’d be able to go to sleep hearing the breaths and heartbeats of many people in the same room.  
  
If at night he closed his eyes and imagined he was falling asleep with the rest of his leap, it made the soldiering so much easier.

*

Flight school is different from both basic and OTS. John has a room of his own again for the first time since college, and the accommodations are actually a little nicer, since he doesn’t have to share a bathroom.  
  
This was where John wanted to be, this was his chance at the sky, this was his chance to fully cut himself free of the Night World. The Night World had its people - usually witches or Shapeshifters, who were better at passing as human - in all kinds of positions of power in the human world, all with the same goal of keeping the Night World secret and safe. The military was one place the Night World stayed out of. That much scrutiny was bound to result in the military noticing - and trying to examine and weaponize - if someone was superhuman.  
  
Lost witches ended up in the ranks, sure.  
  
But for a Sheppard to join up, even as an officer, as one of the elite, as one of the cocky pilots, was unheard of. Unprecedented. Worthy of shunning.  
  
So John laid his duffel bag on his bed and tacked his Johnny Cash poster on the wall, set his golf clubs in the closet and his guitar in the corner, and called it good.  
  
In the weeks that passed, the place he learned to call home was the sky.

*

Evan knew he wasn't going to be one of the flyboys, the cocky pilots who broke the speed of sound or navigated choppers through enemy airspace. He was going to be a steady, dependable cargo pilot, able to to get things where they needed to be when they needed to be.  
  
He loved the sky, the air, had always had fun climbing the biggest, tallest trees he could find to get an unadulterated view of heavenly blue. He’d always been jealous of the shifters with bird forms, who could actually fly.  
  
He’d never thought he could make himself a home in the sky. Somehow the place he ended up making home was the kitchen on base, where he’d retreat after a long day studying or taking tests or being crammed into a simulator. Even if he no longer had the shared sleep of his leapmates or the black lily flag that had worn out senior year, he had this comfort, the warmth of an oven against his back while he sat on the kitchen floor and inhaled the scent of cookies on the air.  
  
Where he’d always been quiet, solitary, a little aloof for his strangeness, the other men and women rallied around him, offering him recipes, asking him for tastes of home, and he made his own new leap in the kitchens. People gathered, talked, played cards, and waited for treats to come out of the oven, and Evan, solitary panther he was, was no longer alone.

*

The only place John could call his own, to escape the chaos of sun and sand and battle, was the cockpit of his chopper. The mechanics and techs mostly left him alone, didn't question the fastidious way he checked his switches and gauges before and after every flight. The other pilots didn't question when he curled up in the pilot seat with headphones on to block out the world and a book open on his knees, because he was Captain Sheppard, he was friendly and charming, always good for a game of cards or beer and football, could play enough tunes on his guitar for sing-alongs in the O Club.  
  
When he wanted to be alone, he got to be alone. No one questioned that. They all saw enough every day that they understood - sometimes a guy needed time out.  
  
What a guy also needed, out there when the bullets and the RPGs were flying, was people. John had people. He had Holland and Mitch and Dex. If he whispered a witch’s blessing on them whenever they went out on a mission, no one knew but him, and if he gathered a few local herbs to tuck beneath their sleeping bags in their tents, well, he was still a Sheppard. After the disaster that was his marriage to Nancy (his last attempt at a conciliatory gesture for his father, her first attempt at Night World politicking), he had nothing but the fight, and no one man won a war. John didn’t want to win the war, he just wanted to survive, and there was power in numbers. There was safety.  
  
There was home. 

*

Evan had always know the universe was bigger and stranger than most people thought. After all, he could turn into a panther in a thought, was faster and stronger than basically everyone around him (except maybe Teal’c, and he wondered if Teal’c suspected he was different, but their paths rarely crossed), and knew magic was real. That some magical feats could be reproduced by science wasn't a leap of the imagination. That there were other planets full of humanoids and aliens, some friendly, some hostile, was just another facet of the universe Evan would expect.  
  
As he trekked through the gate from planet to planet, learning to make nice with the locals and searching for a viable source of trinium to build battle cruisers capable of space flight and possible interstellar travel, he kept an eye out for the signs. Oh, he knew that Night Children on other planets wouldn’t necessarily use the Black Bouquet to make themselves known, but he reached out with his senses, watched for those telltale Redfern eyes, for magic, for shifter combat leathers - and all he saw was humans. Ordinary humans.  
  
At college there had been other Night Children, some there for kicks and giggles, others there preparing for whatever role the Council had in mind for them. He’d suspected a few of the men and women he’d gone through basic and OTS and flight school with were lost witches, but for the first time, he was well and truly alone. The only one of his kind.  
  
He worked hard to be the best 2IC Edwards could hope for, watched him and learned from him, but he wasn’t sure where he was supposed to be, who he was supposed to be. Some days he woke up and wasn’t sure if he was on Earth or an alien planet or somewhere in between. People had slipped sideways into alternate realities and dimensions, after all.  
  
Before he opened his eyes every morning - he was always the first of his unit awake - he took inventory of his limbs, his body, made sure he was in human form. Then he reached out, traced his fingers over the patch on the sleeve of his jacket, felt the raised threads, traced his designation. SG-11. SG-1 was the flagship team, but Evan was still on a team. No matter where he was or what he was, he was SG-11. So he made sure to make SG-11 the best it could be.

*

The cold in McMurdo wouldn’t bother John so much if he started drinking blood again, if he assumed full vampiric form, but that wasn't what he was in McMurdo was for. McMurdo was punishment. McMurdo was literally being frozen out till he reached his twenty and could be drummed out. No promotion, just _good-bye, do not collect two hundred._  
  
He didn’t want to like it there, but he did. He liked it best when no one wanted him, when no one needed him, when he could bundle up in heavy gear, lie out in the snow, and look at the stars.  
  
The stars were the ultimate beauty in the sky. The sky was his home, and the stars were the greener grass on the other side. He would never be able to fly that high, that free, but he could gaze upward, and he could dream of a place where the stars were his home.

*

Evan imagined that the planet they were on was what Earth had been like, back before the rise of humanity, with its cities and countries, its arbitrary borders and flags. This planet was the one his ancestors had lived on, where they could run and hunt and climb trees, where they could walk it all and see it all and just _be_.  
  
Of course, SG-11 had set up camp, and as soon as Lieutenant Ritter came back with promising readings, a vein of trinium big enough and deep enough to make Prometheus-class ships, they made their camp permanent. Evan organized the men, made bunking assignments and chow assignments, cleaning assignments and maintenance assignments. When the camp was finally in full swing, they had a mini-celebration, because Evan had learned how to cook in a Dutch oven, and everyone gathered around for peach cobbler.  
  
It was late at night, though, that Evan made sure their camp was secure. Once everyone was asleep, he slipped out of his tent, bypassed the night patrol, and made for the edge of camp. He stripped out of his clothes, and he shifted. And he walked the perimeter, the wider perimeter, rubbed against the trees and gouged their trunks with his claws to mark his territory, just like on the commune back home.  
  
If they were going to be here for a while, Evan was going to make sure any local wildlife knew it. Like Colonel Edwards had said, this was home for the foreseeable future.  
  
This was how home had once been.  
  
This was how home would be again.

*

John suspected that he was expected to move into Sumner’s old quarters, set just on the border between the living areas assigned to the Marines and the Air Force. He was sure they were bigger quarters, as befitting his rank and position in the Expedition. John kept his own room. He put up his Johnny Cash poster, unpacked his duffel bag so he didn’t have to go digging through it for his clothes every time. He wasn’t Sumner, had never intended to take his place or be a soldier like him, but for better or worse he was the military commander of the expedition now, and he knew how how order and discipline were important in maintaining calm and efficiency in a war zone. He couldn't report for duty in a wrinkled uniform.  
  
There were a lot of things about the chain of command he didn't like, but there were things about his military service he respected, and looking like the soldier he was was one of those things. Because he wasn’t the soldier Sumner was, he left his hair as it was, declined Sergeant Stackhouse’s kind offer to take a clipper to him. This was Atlantis. It was an alien city in another galaxy, and they were facing an enemy none of them had been prepared for, not even those who’d fought the Goa’uld.  
  
John Sheppard was the military commander of a civilian science exploration expedition on a base that was actually a submersible city. An alien city that, while light years ahead of human technology, was ten thousand years old. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to wrap his head around that, and he'd grown up with a vampire for a mother and a. witch for a father.  
  
He walked the alien halls, listened to the strange way his footsteps echoed, the way the walls felt under his hands, and felt nervous, disjointed, because something was always buzzing under his skin, in the back of his mind, like when his mother had kept a telepathic lock on him when he was a child and playing outside without the watchful eyes of a nanny.  
  
One night, after yet another too-long day of dealing with another Ancient science experiment gone wrong and loose in the city, John lay back on his bed. He doused the lights with a thought, plunging the room into welcome darkness, and he thought, _Good night, Atlantis._  
  
Atlantis thought back, _Good night, John._  
  
She sounded just like his mother.

*

Living on an alien planet was one thing. Living in an alien city in a totally different galaxy was another. The thing about it that most of his Marines were excited about was that they all had their own rooms, every single one of them. The rooms weren’t large or luxurious, but after sleeping in tents offworld or sleeping in the barracks, a private room was a luxury beyond descriptions.  
  
Evan was pretty sure he would feel horrible and alone, just like he had through OTS and flight school.  
  
But then he learned two very important things: he could lock his door so no one could get in, and Atlantis would, at his request, send him a warning if someone was trying to get in.  
  
So, for the first time in years, Evan could sleep in True Form whenever he wanted, which, for the first few weeks, was every night.  
  
(And then Sheppard kissed him, and when he slept in Sheppard’s bed he slept in human form, but oh well.) 

*

John had noticed when Teyla and Ronon started referring to Atlantis as home. At the end of a long day, they’d trudge back to the gate, and one of them would say, _Let’s go home._  
  
After being on Atlantis for that first year, totally cut off from Earth, John had felt so strange going back to Earth, seeing the bustle of the city, having his promotion ceremony (and pretending to be unaware of the political struggle Weir engaged in to make his position as military commander permanent instead of interim).  
  
Atlantis was his home. She greeted him every time he returned to her, and she bade him farewell every time he departed, because she knew he was coming back.  
  
Neither Ronon nor Teyla were prone to complaining on extended missions away from the city, but sometimes, when they were out camping, they talked about things they were missing from the city, like the fact that it was movie night (and Teyla really hoped someone would save her a helping of popcorn) or amateur wrestling night among the Marines (who had finally agreed to let Ronon onto the mats to compete).  
  
When John fell asleep in Rodney’s arms, though, he didn’t miss Atlantis. Rodney was home, his warmth and solidness, the way he mumbled in his sleep, and the way his mind was open to John’s in dreams, both of them standing beneath an endless sky of stars.

*

Evan had traded the warmth of John Sheppard’s bed and kisses for the freedom to roam the city, head held high, proud to be exactly what he was, free to shift forms and climb and stalk as he had in his youth. He’d thought it a poor trade, because the home he’d thought he’d found had been turned upside down by the way his Marines looked sideways at him after he’d used his True Form to combat the Genii and that fateful spark of the silver cord between John and Rodney in the lab.  
  
And then...Ronon.  
  
He was unafraid of Evan’s True Form, was proud to walk the hallways of Atlantis with a sleek black jaguar by his side. He was unimpressed by military restrictions on who officers and soldiers could be affectionate with and share lives with.  
  
Home was no longer Atlantis’s walls and balconies, New Lantea’s moons and seas.  
  
Home was in Ronon’s arms.

*

However much John could understand Woolsey’s decision to remove him from command, he couldn’t help but feel betrayed by the way no one trusted him, no believed him. Even though Atlantis spoke to him softly, when he walked the halls he could sense the others watching him, wary of him, afraid of him.  
  
He kept wearing his uniform, because he’d been a soldier too long to stop doing that, but he stopped doing PT drills with the marines, stayed away from the shooting range (he was a vampire, now, and more efficient a killing machine than any of the Marines could ever dream to be). Instead he stayed in the labs with Rodney, and he did calculations till his eyes crossed (and Zelenka looked a little betrayed, that all those times he’d had to simplify things for the soldiers, John had understood what he was talking about).  
  
He slept in Rodney’s quarters every night, and not just because they were nowhere near the soldiers’ living quarters.  
  
He felt like a visitor there, though, forced to sneak back to his own quarters for clean clothes and a shower and whatever else, so as a matter of practicality he started leaving some changes of clothes in Rodney’s quarters, and then his book, and then his guitar.  
  
He realized he’d made Rodney’s quarters his own when he woke up one morning and noticed he’d brought his Johnny Cash poster over, tacked it to the wall beside Rodney’s diplomas.

*

Evan knew Ronon was watching him carefully, was worried about him. Ronon, for all that he was a giant and capable of serious destruction with just his bare hands, was actually a gentle, thoughtful soul. It was the little things - the way he would make sure Evan had enough food, bring him a drink without being asked, make sure Evan had a good pillow and a soft blanket, quietly teach Evan the Satedan ways.  
  
Evan was finally having a taste of how Ronon must have felt on Atlantis, all the Earthers making casual references to popular culture and history as shorthand. Now Evan was the one who was lost, scrambling to learn everything he could about Sateda, her history, and her ways. The difficulty, of course, was that when Ronon had a question about a MacGyver reference, someone inevitably had a few episodes on DVD. When Evan had a question about a reference to a popular radio show, no one had anything but their memories of it to share, and Evan’s every asking brought shadows to their eyes.  
  
At the end of a long day, shifting debris in the Central Square to make room for a market and a central chow line, Evan sat on the floor of his and Ronon’s little room, stretched his sore muscles. He’d be fine in the morning, he knew, but he was sore now.  
  
Ronon sat beside him. “Do you like it here?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“But you don’t think of it as home, do you?”  
  
“Not quite yet, but I will.”  
  
“It’s your home too. You don’t have to be Satedan. The new Sateda will be like your America - with people from everywhere. You can bring some of Earth, some of America, some of California to Sateda.”  
  
Evan smiled at him. “Thanks. Now come on, let’s sleep.”  
  
And so they slept.  
  
When Evan returned to their room after work the next day, there was a massive sheet of paper tacked to one wall, and an array of Satedan inks and paintbrushes. Ronon must have gone scavenging to that art supply store he’d mentioned.  
  
For the first time in a long time, Evan picked up a paintbrush, and he stared at the blank paper for a while. Then he selected a handful of inks, and he set to work.  
  
When Ronon returned, Evan had finished. He’d painted a giant black lily and two creatures curled around its stem, one black jaguar, one golden jaguar.  
  
“It’s beautiful,” Ronon said quietly.  
  
Evan pressed a soft kiss to his mouth and said, “It’s home.”


End file.
